Here are a few pics of our last trip. I didn’t get much variety, and if I hadn’t told you, you probably wouldn’t have any idea where these were taken. As it turns out, it’s hard to take pictures of a toddler you’re too busy chasing.

Here are my failed attempts at getting a good picture of Link and I together. Oh, and just so you know, Link really has a good time when we go, though you’d never guess from the pictures!

Posing in a car from Mr Toad’s Wild Ride. He’d want to crawl up inside this car every trip. It was great. He loved it, and the best part was, we didn’t have to wait in line!

Boat rides are Link’s favorite. And if you didn’t realize, Disneyland has a lot of them. When we talk about Disneyland, he always mentions the bo (boats) and the wadden (water).

Here he is on Small World—his favorite.

Coming off Small World, being all independent with his buddy Benji.

I bought Link a pair of Mickey ears with some left-over birthday gift card money. I should have removed the price tag before photographing him wearing them.

Oh how I love my little buddy! We really have such a great time together!

Here’s Link at our church Christmas party, scoping out Santa from a distance. Humm, he doesn’t look so bad.

Then again. . .

I think we may have traumatized the poor kid!

Last night I got to ride a duffy boat in the Newport Beach bay with our Young Women. It was a blast! The lights were beautiful, but the company was even better. I love these girls!

This month has been very, very busy for our family. And because we have something planned every night this week and we were running out of time to get our Christmas tree up, we decided to do it first thing this morning.

Lincoln has a love for literature. Often when I hear silence and think Link is probably getting into something, I’ll find him in his room, sitting quietly, pulling books off the shelves, carefully paging through them. He’ll spend at least 30 minutes a day doing this. It’s probably his favorite pastime. Often I’ll place him near his books with a snack, and he’ll keep himself entertained the whole time I take a shower!

Before Halloween we visited a local pumpkin patch and petting zoo. Even though he didn’t actually “‘pet” the animals, he was still very excited about the whole thing and he did touch them a couple times.

For Halloween, we all dressed up like pirates. Actually, that’s not completely accurate. For the Day Before Halloween, we all dressed up like pirates. We were so Halloweened out by the end of that night that we actually went to dinner on Halloween night instead of going Trick-or-Treating. Here are a few pictures from our many festivities. Unfortunately we didn’t get a picture of all of us together on our camera.

Miles competed as the reigning champ of the pie eating contest at our ward Halloween party. Unfortunately the title was taken from him by Brother Wingard. It was a close one though!

Oh and tonight we went to Pei Wei for dinner. Have you seen their fountain drink dispenser? Seriously one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen. I felt like I was in “Back to the Future.” I think they called it the Coca Cola Freestyle. Anyway, it’s this pod thing that has a touch screen where you select your flavor of soda. Sounds kinda simple, but here’s the thing, there are more than 100 combinations to try. Tonight I had peach-Sprite, vanilla-Diet Coke, and my favorite was orange-caffine-free-Diet Coke.

You can see proof here and here.

Because Miles and I ran the race together, neither of us were able to take pictures. A few good friends/spectators got some shots of us though. As soon as I can round up some pictures I’ll post them here. So stay tuned to see pictures of a couple of very sweaty, tired, and feeling-very-accomplished Michelle and Miles!

Official time: 2:05:36—We were trilled!

It started when my sister and her family arrived last Sunday night. She, her husband, and three girls came to celebrate her two oldest daughters’ birthdays. On Monday we spent the day at the beach. Laguna Beach. My favorite beach. Parking usually stinks at Laguna, but this time of year it’s not too bad.

And of course they spent the mandatory two days at Disneyland. Miles and I devoted an entire day to Disney (using our beloved annual passes). The second day, I sent my sister with her husband and two oldest girls and I offered to watch their youngest (almost 3-year-old). Watching two little ones wore me out more than spending the entire day at Disneyland! I don’t know how mothers with more than one do it! By the end, I was counting the minutes until they walked through the door!

On Pirates of the Caribbean. Link freaked out on this ride and clung to mommy the whole time!

Link enjoys the carousel.

Waiting in line for the Pinocchio ride. Link didn’t dig this one either!

We found that using the backpack was much easier than a stroller. Link enjoyed just hanging out.

10-year-old Kiarah was brave and went on Space Mountain with me and her mom.

The birthday girls!

The girls’ favorite part was meeting the Disney Princesses: Ariel, Jasmine, and Belle.

Bell was their favorite.

My try-out pose for becoming a Disney Princess.

And this is Nate’s pose.

And here are the girls showing off their new princess merchandise. Notice Avery posing in her new Belle flipflops.

Here she is again.

And again

It was so much fun to see my sister and her family. I love my nieces to death. Nate is a stud and is so easy to be around. Their visit flew by. I miss them. Good thing I’m planning a trip to St. George in June!

So my sister’s family and my parents basically passed each other on the freeway. My sister left of Thursday for home, and my parents drove in to California Thursday night. My mom and dad were kind enough to watch Lincoln while Miles and I went on an overnighter (our first night away from Link) for our fourth anniversary. It was perfect! Link was an angel which made it so much easier to be away.

We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. We stayed in the Hyatt on the Back Bay in Newport. We ate at an amazing seafood restaurant (The Cannery) which is right on the bay. You can literally drive your boat up and park (if we had a boat that is). I had the crusted halibut with these purple sweet potatoes and champagne sauce, and Miles had the swordfish that had a nummy mustard sauce. Both dishes were incredible. We had two desserts that night. Decadent Chocolate Molten Cake from the restaurant and a Reese’s Chocolate Peanutbutter Carmel Apple from Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory. We had the left overs for breakfast in the hotel room!

Then, because we didn’t have our normal 7:00 pm curfew (Link’s bedtime) we went to a late showing of Star Trek. Miles loved it. And it was just alright for me. Just not my kind of movie I guess. But good for what it was.

We didn’t get to sleep until 2:00 in the morning! Then, we got to sleep in, but couldn’t sleep later than 9:00am. I guess that’s what happens when you get up at 6:00ish every morning (including weekends) for the past year. We were meaning to go for a run around the Back Bay loop trail right from our hotel room, but Miles forgot his shoes. Luckily we were close enough to home where we could swing by and pick them up. We finally got on the trail at about 1:30 in the afternoon. The run was hot, muggy, long (10.5 miles) and there wasn’t much water along the trail so we were miserably thirsty. I seemed like the worst run of my life! We did it though and afterwords we went straight to the closest gas station and bought 2 gallons of liquid (water and gatorade). Then we went and relaxed in the hotel hot tub and took a refreshing poolside nap. Ahhhh. Perfect!

On Saturday we attended an Easter egg hunt hosted by an awesome couple from our church. They voluntarily put on the hunt every Easter and even save and store the plastic eggs to reuse every year. I’m guessing there were nearly a hundred people at the park. We had a very good time. Link successfully found two eggs—one for each hand. Mommy and Daddy enjoyed eating the chocolate!

Easter Dinner

Then on Sunday we invited a few couples over for Easter dinner. Last year at the time we were visiting some friends in New York. We were invited to eat Easter dinner with some people from their ward. We enjoyed ourselves so much we wanted to recreate something like it in our home.

We enjoyed a ham dinner with rolls, salad, “resurrection” potatoes (instead of funeral potatoes. Lilly and Clark are so clever!) and “empty tomb” sweet rolls for dessert (those Biesingers are so creative). The sweet rolls were so fun! They were hollow in the middle and were made by wrapping dough around a marshmallow. While cooking the marshmallow melts making the rolls, sweet, sticky, yummy, and hollow. I’ll have to remember that for next year! I wish I would have taken a picture!

After dinner we dyed eggs. Everyone embraced their creative genius. I made my magnum opus.

Stacey should just give up on the PhD and become an egg designer. Miles won the Nastiest Egg award. He dipped his egg in every color, shell-less. Looks appetizing eh? Lilly spent her night talking about geography while she created her version of the earth, if it were shaped like an egg. And Clark made a pretty blue egg.

The newlyweds just stared dreamily into each others’ eyes and successfully dyed their eggs one-handed. The other hand was busy holding hands! : )

Ok, ok, on a more serious note. I really, really enjoyed Easter this year. Not because of the entertaining activities, but because I felt I spent much more time than usual pondering and expressing gratitude for my Savior.

Anyway, we ran it in under 1 hour, which was our goal. I think I could have pushed a little bit more. I still had some in me at the end. My official time was 58:40. Miles’ time was 58:41. I beat him! Ha! Actually, we held hands across the finish line. How sweet! Hope came in less than a minute after us. So pretty much what I’m saying is, we’re amazing! Never in a million years did I think I would run a 10K, let alone train for a half marathon and possibly a full marathon. *shudder*

We are still on track for running the Half Marathon in Laguna Hills on Memorial Day, May 25th. We’re doing 8 miles again on Saturday. Yay for us!

Don’t you think this picture is funny? It looks like I’m balancing the pier on my head!